


wasteland, baby

by lunar_peach



Category: Banana Fish (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Crushes, Falling In Love, Friendship/Love, Inspired by a Hozier Song, M/M, Pining Ash Lynx, Requited Love, THEY'RE IN LOVE!!!, Title from a Hozier Song, can I get a yeehaw, hey listen im feeling soft and tender so, i guess this is who i am now
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-14
Updated: 2019-07-14
Packaged: 2020-06-28 00:24:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 933
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19800883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lunar_peach/pseuds/lunar_peach
Summary: Set between episodes 6 and 7! An exploration of Ash and Eiji's relationship (kinda).





	wasteland, baby

Patches of skin glistened with freckles beneath the rays of a solstice sun. 

Ash watched him move through the thicket with ease, touching each branch and leaf, like it was the first time in his life Eiji had found himself in a forest. He stepped with ceaseless amazement-- eyes wide, swallowing the world and its contents whole with that same doe-eyed look on his face.

It’s just one of the many things about him that makes Ash’s stomach turn into a minefield of too many emotions to ever decipher. 

“There are thorns everywhere,” Ash told him, stepping into the thicket himself. “Be careful, we don’t have any more bandages.” Eiji nodded but went on, unafraid. Ash trailed close behind him, arms out and ready to catch him with every little leap forward Eiji took. 

Ibe called them friends— “real buddies”-- but it felt like more to him. 

“Do you want me to carry your bundle?” Ash asked as he watched Eiji struggle to keep the loosely collected tinder all beneath his arms. 

“No, I’m okay.” 

The breeze lifted their hair and sent the dry leaves on the ground swirling through an opening in the forest. Up ahead of them, Max, Ibe, and Shorter waited for them by the truck. They were starting a fire and Eiji and Ash were tasked with scavenging for tinder. 

While he wasn’t quite uncoordinated, Eiji wasn’t as careful as Ash would have liked him to be. There was too much trust placed on the ground beneath his step. 

A _crush_ , that was how Shorter described it, even if he was just mocking him. Ash had had crushes before. This was nothing like those. There was no anticipation, no build up, no uneasiness, just...realization. He wasn’t waiting for anything because Eiji was already there. 

“Ash!” Eiji screamed. The shock in his voice sent a brush of cold up his spine. Ash dropped the sticks in his arms and placed himself in front of him, hand ready on his gun. _Someone had found them. They were on their way to—_

Eiji placed a hand over his, making his way past, toward a clearing past the trees. A wheat field.

He turned around to look at him, going pink as he kneeled down. “Sorry— it’s not anything bad. I found baby rabbits.” He pointed down toward a burrow, his smile sheepish. “Come see!”

He huffed at him, but walked over and stood over both Eiji and the burrow, still too shaken to let his guard down. He needed to keep watch, just in case anything happened. He had to be ready. 

Eiji touched his arm and the worry all but melted away. “It’s okay. Look.”

Ash nodded and, gently, like water traveling down the incline of a brook, dropped to his knees beside him. Squat down like nesting birds, they looked over the small puffs of fur, only barely exposed for them to see. 

Brown. Black. White. Spotted. All of them with noses as pink as Eiji’s shirt. “They’re cute.” He stated it plainly, observation rather than an opinion. 

“Mhm, I thought you’d like them,” Eiji said in the same tone. 

“Are you mocking me?” 

“Yes,” Eiji deadpanned. 

They burst into laughter and fell back into the grass, letting their voices fade into the chirping of sparrows and whistling summer winds amongst the stalks of wheat. 

Eiji closed his eyes and let out a deep sigh like he’d been holding it in for ages-- maybe he had. They had been driving for hours on hours and had only gotten the opportunity to stretch their legs. He must’ve felt boxed in sitting the back of that truck. They all did. 

As the world turned to gold at the hands of the sinking sun, and the silence revealed their exhaustion, Ash turned his head to look at him, just for a moment. But one look turned to seconds spent pondering the arches of Eiji’s cupid’s bow. Soft, round, rosy. A certain kind of softness he hadn’t known in years. 

He was all edges compared to Eiji. There wasn’t a single soft thing about himself. Even his thoughts were calculative and full of unrest. He didn’t take the time to bask in the world. The world had stripped Ash of something like a soul. An essence that existed in all humans. 

Romanticism. Love. Careless youth. 

“Do I have something on my face?” Eiji asked, eyes still closed. It was Ash’s turn to blush except on him, blush burned red. 

He cleared his throat. “Uh, no... you just, um— there was a bug—“

Eiji smiled and opened his eyes only to point up at the clouds in the sky. “Look, that one looks like a cat.”

Ash squinted and peered upwards. “I don’t see it,” he mumbled with a frown. There were blobs and puffs and tufts but no cats. Only shapeless nothings for him to classify. Cumulus clouds drifting in the troposphere. 

A warm hand intertwined itself with his. 

Max had called them two sides of the same coin. Ash, even with his IQ, hadn’t been able to really understand what he meant. Not until then, as they held each other in the smallest of ways. It came naturally, holding his hand. Like he’d been waiting his entire life to do it. 

They came from the same thing, wherever or whatever that was. Being with Eiji was becoming whole. It was their own personal homecoming. 

“That’s okay,” Eiji told him as he squeezed his hand, closing his eyes once more. 

Ash smiled and closed his eyes too. 

“There’s not much up there anyway.”

**Author's Note:**

> uwu hope you liked it this is my first work in months and like... it feels nice to post again


End file.
